Theodore Decker: Sawmill Wetlands teeming with wildlife, hope

Sunday

Apr 15, 2018 at 8:46 AMApr 15, 2018 at 8:46 AM

The patch of woods behind Planet Fitness is an anchor of stillness, orbited night and day by frenetic swirls of traffic.

On the access roads around the 17.5-acre plot are Carter's, OshKosh B'gosh, Old Navy, Ashley Homestore and a Whole Foods Market. There is chicken at Raising Cane's, seafood at Joe's Crab Shack and pizza for the gobbling mobs of rugrats at Chuck E. Cheese's.

To the east, there are senior living and apartment complexes, and to the south there will soon be another complex on a field of mud that used to be The Andersons store before it was torn down and carted away.

Amid all this commotion, there is little to draw the eye to the woods. Much of it is seasonally flooded with a foot or so of water, and all of it is fenced off. One might assume the plot was cast aside by developers for being too wet or too small or too misshapen.

That is not the case.

The future of this parcel, known as the Sawmill Wetlands, has been hotly contested for years. After a recent court ruling, the fight may be over.

Last month, the 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus overturned a Franklin County Common Pleas Court decision that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which owns the property, had to give it to a developer because the state had breached its contract.

The Sawmill land, one of the last shreds of urban wetlands in Franklin County, had been given to the state with a deed restriction saying it had to remain publicly accessible. But the state had promised to sell the property and help the developer lift that restriction in exchange for more than twice as much land abutting Highbanks Metro Park.

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When supporters of the wetlands and environmental groups caught wind of this deal, they were furious. And when the state backed out of it, the developers sued.

Following the recent appeals court decision, James Schrim III of JDS So Cal Ltd. said "political influence and hysteria and cowardice" had prevailed. He and his partner could appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, but nothing had been docketed there as of Friday afternoon. Environmentalists are cautiously optimistic that they've won.

To the Friends of the Sawmill Wetlands and to people like Mark Dilley, president of the Ohio Wetlands Association, the stakes were high.

"It's more societally important, maybe, than it is ecologically important," he said of the site.

Dilley feared that losing the Sawmill Wetlands to development would endanger other land earmarked for preservation.

"We encounter this all the time in the conservation field, where properties are set aside with the intent that they're going to be protected permanently," he said. "The thought that that could later be used as a bargaining chip (in negotiations with developers) just seems to set a bad precedent."

Wetlands provide shelter for wildlife, improve groundwater quality, and offer people a chance to connect with nature.

In Ohio, Dilley said, "we've lost over 90 percent of our wetlands, and we're continuing to lose more."

A few years ago at the Sawmill Wetlands, Dilley came across a red bat curled up amid the leaf litter, trying to stay warm during a cold snap. It was the first time he had seen the species in the wild.

"That gave me some hope, that there's still residual value in a site like that," he said.

As of last week, the gates to the preserve — recently decorated by someone with bright yellow wreaths of artificial forsythia branches — remained locked, as they have been since the developers sued the state.

It is still early in the year, and the vernal pools behind the fence are not yet teeming with salamanders and other life.

Two mallard drakes and a hen paddled through the flooded woodland, quacking among themselves. High in the trees, songbirds raised a clamor. They called out from the heart of the patch of woods, as if testifying to the value of protecting a planet's fitness.

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker

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